Former President Goodluck Jonathan faced all manner of acerbic criticism when he was in power. He was variously described as being clueless, directionless and weak. Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, once likened him to the biblical King Nebuchadnezzar. In the twilight of his administration, Jonathan said Nigerians would appreciate him after he had left office. We laughed it off then. But by the time his successor, Muhammadu Buhari, stayed a few months in office, Nigerians began to miss Jonathan greatly.
Buhari was not only clueless, he was incompetent and nepotistic. He promised to fix Nigeria’s three major sickness: corruption, insecurity and poor economy. He failed to clearly tackle any of these illnesses. Even, corruption blossomed to the extent that the Accountant-General of the Federation under him, Ahmed Idris, and his co-defendants are standing trial on 14 charges of stealing and criminal breach of trust to the tune of N109 billion. Insecurity also festered as terrorists and bandits became more emboldened and operated with impunity. They even threatened to kidnap Buhari at some point. The economy became comatose as the rate of unemployment, poverty, hunger and our public debt profile worsened.
Buhari handed over to Bola Tinubu on May 29, 2023. Like Jonathan, some of his acolytes and media aides said Nigerians would yearn for him after he had left office. Although Tinubu snatched and grabbed power with the collusion of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the judiciary, many of us felt that he would be better than Buhari despite his campaign promise to continue where the retired General stopped.
Barely one year after he assumed office as President, Tinubu has not only continued from where Buhari stopped, he has surpassed him in incompetence and bad governance. The first sign that Nigerians were in for a rough ride was the manner he announced the removal of fuel subsidy during his inauguration as President. “Subsidy is gone”, was how he carelessly informed his citizens about the fuel subsidy removal. He bothered less about the ripple effects of the sudden announcement and the immediate institution of palliative measures to cushion the effects.
Regrettably, Nigeria appears to be under a leadership curse. Every successive government comes out worse than its predecessor. As predicted, many Nigerians are already missing Buhari. Under his presidency, the foreign exchange rate was far less than N1,000 to a dollar. In just one year of Tinubu, it has jumped to about N1,500 to a dollar. A month after Buhari handed over to Tinubu, inflation rate was 22.8 per cent. One year after, headline inflation has jumped to 34.19 per cent. In June 2023, food inflation was 25.25 per cent. By June 2024, it had climbed to 40.87 per cent.
In practical terms, the price of almost every commodity in the market has tripled. Under Jonathan, a bottle of groundnut was less than N1,000. It jumped to over N1,000 under Buhari. Today, it is about N2,500 a bottle. A bag of 50 kilogrammes of rice was less than N10,000 under Jonathan. It jumped to an average of about N30,000 under Buhari. Today, the price of that staple is over N80,000, more than the recently increased minimum wage of N70,000. The price of fuel was less than N100 a litre under Jonathan. Nigerians protested when Jonathan planned to increase it to about N150 a litre in 2012. President Tinubu was among those who stridently opposed the increment then. Even under Buhari, it was less than N200 a litre. Today, it is over N700 in many filling stations across the country. This has affected the cost of intra and inter-city transportation in the country.
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Nigerians have continued to groan under the weight of this high cost of living. Hunger is a present danger. Crime rate has ballooned. Corruption has continued to grow. On top of all these, the people in power continue to live as if we were still in the days of Yakubu Gowon when money was not a problem but how to spend it. Amid hardship, President Tinubu commissioned the N21 billion official residence of the vice-president in June 2024. The sum of N57.6 billion was spent on the purchase of sport utility vehicles for federal lawmakers last year. Recently, the House of Representatives Committee on National Security and Intelligence recommended the purchase of two new presidential jets. But activist and former presidential candidate, Omoyele Sowore, alleged the other day that the President had already purchased a $100m presidential jet and invested an additional $50m for its customization. We can go on and on.
This is why some youths have taken it upon themselves to organize a 10-day nationwide protest against hunger billed to start from Thursday, August 1, 2024. The protest is tagged, #EndBadGovernance. Since the announcement of this protest, many of the people in power have not rested. They are in panic mode. Security agencies are on high alert. President Tinubu has met with security chiefs, traditional rulers and some other stakeholders all in a bid to avert the looming protest. He has also appealed to the youths to shelve their plan to protest.
Leadership deficit has been the bane of Nigeria. If we had got the leadership recruitment process right, only very few nations can match us in terms of progress and development. Nigerians are willing to make amends. But our selfish politicians will not allow that because that will amount to taking the feeding bottle out of their mouths. Some of them put ethnic and other primordial baits in the hook of our relationship to confuse and trap some of their illiterate, poor and gullible kinsmen into believing that they are fighting for their interests. When this fails, they collude with the electoral umpire to rig themselves into office. Going to court to get justice is illusory because the judiciary has turned out to be among the most corrupt institutions in the country.
We borrowed our costly presidential system of government from the United States of America. But we have failed to imbibe the good tenets of that system. President Joe Biden wanted to go for a second term in office. He had Donald Trump of the Republican Party to contend with. Two of them featured in a debate where the 81-year-old Biden fumbled. There were signs that old age has got the greater part of him. Hence, there were strident calls on him to quit the presidential race.
Biden hearkened to the voice of his people. He stepped down from the race and endorsed his deputy, Kamala Harris, to take over from him. This is clear evidence of selfless service overriding the selfish tendencies of a leader. Biden desired to complete his term in office, but in the overriding interest of his citizens, he stepped down for a younger, more energetic candidate. If the 59-year-old Harris wins the November 5 election, she will be the first female President of the US in history.
Many Nigerians have wondered if such a thing is possible in their own country. During the campaign for Nigeria’s presidential election last year, it was obvious that Tinubu lacked the necessary qualities to be our President. He shunned debates organized for presidential candidates to tell Nigerians what they could offer. Some of his campaign remarks were incoherent. He exhibited signs that old age has set in. But he felt it was his turn, did everything possible to grab power and has now left Nigerians in the lurch.
The future does not look bright. What many of our crooked politicians are after now is to amass heavy war chest to prosecute the 2027 general election. You can go hungry for days. That is not their business. You can fall sick without access to a good medical facility. It’s none of their business because they have access to world-class medical facilities in France, London and Germany. Your children may be out of school for all they care. Their own children and grandchildren attend standard schools abroad. Even if fuel costs N5,000 a litre, they don’t bother because government takes care of almost all their needs.
It’s good that our youths appear to be waking up from their slumber. Their planned protest will soon come and go. But the problems may remain largely unsolved. I am not a prophet of doom. I am only responding to the signs and dictates of the time.
Nevertheless, we cannot despair forever. We must continue to hold the leaders accountable. We must continue to look for ways to better our society. Above all, we must all resolve to use our votes effectively in 2027. Our battle is against some powerful retrogressive forces. Victory will surely be ours if we remain resolute.
